BakerHopp Insurance Group has been serving its clients since 1916. John A Baker started his career in the life insurance business. In the late 1920's, at the start of the Great Depression, people were borrowing on their life insurance, rather than purchasing new. Baker entered the independent agency system, offering auto, home and business insurance to his customers. In 1945, John Baker asked his
son-in-law, David Hopp, to join him in the business; and thus, the beginning of BakerHopp. The business continued to grow, and in 1967, David Hopp Jr. entered the agency after graduating from Western Michigan University with a major in insurance. He was successful in expanding the agency with organic growth and through acquisitions. In 1988, BakerHopp was named in Michigan Business Magazine as the 69th fastest growing privately held company in Michigan. In 1996, Gretchen Hopp Doyle had a successful career in Chicago working as a public relations professional. But she realized that her calling was to work for her father in the insurance industry, and as a result she moved back home to Detroit in 1996 to join the agency as a Commercial Lines Producer. Adopting the same work ethic and client dedication shown by her previous three generations, Gretchen became Vice-President and a minority stockholder six years later. In 2006, after almost forty years in the industry, David Hopp Jr. retired from the insurance business and sold the agency to Gretchen. Gretchen acknowledges the key to the success of the business was “staying true to our guiding principles, while forming and maintaining great relationships with our insurance companies, customers, and employees.” While Detroit has changed a great deal in the past century, the pillars of BakerHopp Insurance Group have remained exactly the same. And under Gretchen’s stewardship, the company looks forward to its next 100 years providing industry-leading levels of service, ethical business practices as it provides protection to companies and families in and around Metro Detroit.
